Harold Macmillan

Harold Macmillan (10 February 1894-29 December 1986) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963, succeeding Anthony Eden and preceding Alec Douglas-Home.

Biography
Harold Macmillan was born in London into the Macmillan publishing family, and he was educated at Eton and Oxford. After service in World War I (in which he was wounded three times), he went into publishing, but later entered politics and was elected to Parliament for the Conservative Party in 1924. Throughout his career, he was haunted by the loss of life incurred in the war, and the suffering of the ordinary soldier. It was partly this, and the terrible poverty of his constituency of Stockton-on-Tees, that saw him placed firmly on the progressive wing of the Conservative Party. He lost his seat in 1929, but was re-elected in 1931. In the 1930s, he was highly critical of appeasement and government economic policies. He was influenced by the work of John Maynard Keynes and his belief that it was necessary for the state to cooperate with capital to create a mixed economy, in which the failures of capitalism (such as high unemployment) could be remedied.

Cabinet positions
In May 1940, under Winston Churchill, he gained his first experience of government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply. In 1942, he was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, and then Minister of State in North Africa with Cabinet rank. In this post, he was responsible for British policy in the Mediterranean until the end of World War II, much of which involved working with his French and American counterparts. He lost his seat in the 1945 general election, but returned in a by-elction later in the year as MP for Bromley. As Housing Minister from 1951 to 1954, he was enormously successful in organizing the largest local authority building programme ever seen in Britain. He became Minister of Defense in 1954 and then Anthony Eden's Foreign Secretary in 1955. After finding that Eden liked to keep a firm control of foreign affairs, he was happy to become Chancellor of the Exchequer later that year.

Premiership
Following the Suez Crisis, he replaced Eden as Prime Minister in January 1957. He proved to be extraordinarily adept at reviving the party's fortunes, through being attuned to the wishes of the potential Conservative constituency. Subsequently much criticized for his refusal to reduce public expenditure in 1958, this nevertheless contributed to an overwhelming election victory in 1959, despite the party's unpopularity when he took over. His famous proclamation to the South African Parliament in 1960 that the days of colonialism were over as the "winds of change" were blowing through Africa was an equally pragmatic acceptance that Britain could no longer afford to keep its colonies against their will. He had an extremely close relationship with United States president John F. Kennedy, and was at the heart of the negotiations resulting in the July 1963 Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty between the USA, the Soviet Union, and Britain. Nevertheless, he never had total control over his party, though his domestic position became particularly difficult after the 1963 Profumo Affair. He resignned in October 1963 (officially on the grounds of ill health), and subsequently devoted much of his time to the duties as Chancellor of Oxford University, to which office he had been elected in 1960. From 1984 he was a prominent member of the House of Lords and an outspoken critic of Thatcherism.